


Five Avengers Who Earned Their Fan Cred Honestly (and one who didn't)

by melannen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fandom, Gen, Meta, Science Fiction, Star Wars - Freeform, Worldcon, fannish history, five things, futurians, norse myth - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1940, Bucky took Steve and a couple of girls to the closing weeks of the New York World's Fair, and Steve sneaked off to go to the U. S. Army recruiting station instead.</p><p>In 1939, Bucky took Steve and a couple of girls to the New York World's Fair when it was still new and exciting. Steve sneaked off to go to the First World Science Fiction Convention instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Concerning the Son of Odin and the Warrior-Poets of Midgard

**Author's Note:**

> I was arguing with someone about whether it made sense to write the Avengers as fans, realized my argument came down to "but my headcanon! it makes sense!" and decided to write this fic instead. Feel free to borrow if you need your own headcanon!
> 
> Key to the references, when necessary, at end of each chapter.

When Thor first came to dwell among the great warriors of Midgard, in their ship which was drawn through the sky by four tethered whirlwinds, there were many things which were unfamiliar to him. And he came to learn, as he had never needed to learn before, in all his travels through the nine worlds, for never before had he sought friends in the worlds he visited, that "warrior" did not always mean the same thing to his Midgardian companions as it did to a son of Asgard.

There was one thing which was familiar, though, which made him smile, here among these sparely furnished rooms of angled glass, as he recalled the songs and storytelling of the great halls of his father's house: of the mightiest heroes of Midgard, they were all of them poets.

The skald's way had never come naturally to Thor, not as the ways of weapons and of war-tactics did, not in the way Loki could stand in the midst of whirling chaos and declaim a few well-chosen lines to make the doughtiest of opponents lose heart; and Thor had been willing enough to leave those portions of the warrior's art to him. He had learned the least of the stories and the songs of his people, what was necessary to be king of Asgard, but what need he more when he would have his brother beside him?

And indeed, when, as a youth, he had at times attempted to sit by Loki and read the tomes of saga and myth which he studied so intently, to accompany him to the great convocations of poets and scholars at which the stories were taught and changed and created, Loki had only smiled at him distantly and told him to go back to his swordplay, for which he was better-suited.

And if Loki wished to keep his stories for himself, as he kept so many things, twined into that snail-shell of a mind, Thor would let him: it was mostly for the knowing of Loki that he had wished to learn, and Loki did not wish him to know this. He would have all of Loki if he could, but he would not take what his brother did not wish to give.

(Also he grew tired, as Loki lost patience with his questions and his fidgeting, of being chased from the room by a spell of foul sorcery which might turn him into a woman, or a frog, if he did not flee with all speed. Foul sorcery which, unlike poetry, was not a proper part of a warrior's arts.)

It was only after Loki was lost to them, after Thor realized that mortal humans on Midgard knew more of his own stories than he, that he turned back to the things that Loki loved so much, those tales of heroes and monsters, of great ventures and vast magics. He sat once again among the young warriors, learning the skaldic arts from Lord Bragi, and listened to Hogun and Volstagg in their cups, as they spun their great yarns - truly listened, as he had never done before; he sat at his mother's feet as she spun yarns of other sorts, and learned from her the songs she had composed in her girlhood, different than the skalds' but ringing with the same truths; he went to the great convocation, in his brother's place, and spoke to the poets and warriors who had composed many among the poems he was learning, saw the wild contests of wit and erudition, sat among them as they raised toasts to warriors of old and traded verses between them like thrown weapons, like handclasps between brothers.

It was as much a shock to Thor as anyone the day he sat in the great hall in Asgard and, unthinkingly, answered Iðunn's quote from the saga of Egil Skallagrímson with one of his own. All the hall stood silent and stared at him, for it was not a thing he could have done even a year ago, to so much as recognize the words of the wise, much less speak them; but he shrugged, from his seat at Odin's right hand, and said, "He hath need of his wits who wanders wide, / aught simple will serve at home; / but a gazing-stock is the fool who sits / mid the wise, and nothing knows."

There was a general murmur of approval from the assembled, and the conversation resumed; though the Hávamál was not so well known on Asgard as Erik of Midgard had spoken of it among his own people, so perhaps they thought the verses were his own. But his father favored him with one of his now-rare smiles, and for the first time in a long time, Thor began to think again that someday he might be truly worthy of his father's place in more than strength of arms.

A fortnight later he defeated Fandral in a contest of flyting. It was not so great an accomplishment - Fandral was only but competent at the art; to gain true renown he would have to defeat Hogun, or Sif, who in Loki's absence was the court's acknowledged champion in the art of insult. To a lesser man his friends' exaggerated astonishment at such a minor victory might seem an insult in itself, but he was too astonished himself to thank them with ought but sincerity for their congratulations.

So when he stood among his new Midgardian companions, and Tony replied to Bruce's complaint about dead equipment with an adage about a plaintive longing for the waters of the North, and together they recited the poem from which it came - a dialogue of a formalized sort - he felt himself truly among brothers, though he understood little of the poem itself or its forms. 

When Steve closed a large book he had been reading, and recited to himself, "Now far ahead the road has gone / and I must follow, if I can / pursuing it with eager feet / until it joins some larger way," Thor knew how to ask him about the poem, and how to listen with proper attentiveness as Steve told him a tale of a warrior-poet of Midgardian legend, who went out seeking adventure for its own sake, and came home to find all things changed. 

Once Colonel Fury, attempting to talk Clint out of adding a bright purple loincloth to his ceremonial armor, folded his hands over the conference-table, and said, "You will find, Agent Barton, that criminals are a superstitious and--"

"Cowardly lot," the others chorused all together, even Steve, and Natasha said, "What, Colonel, don't you think Barton in a loincloth will strike terror into their hearts? It does me." Thor laughed along, and thought to ask JARVIS, in his role as archive-keeper, to show him the saga of its origin.

And when Tony proposed a program to familiarize Thor and Steve with the most important tales and poems of a Midgardian skald's repertoire, Thor was more than eager to take part. After the first session - a viewing of one of the recorded dramas which they called 'movies', though most of his team-mates knew it word-perfect by memory, as was only fitting for warriors of their status - Bruce turned to him and asked him what he thought.

Thor frowned. "It warms my heart that the great Tattúínárdǿlasaga is remembered also in Midgard; but why do you begin only with the history of Leia Konigsdottir and the burning of the Daudastjarna? Has the start of the saga, the tales of Duku Joðison and Kvaeggan and of Paðéma the Fair, been lost to you?"

Tony crossed his arms and said, "Sorry, there isn't anything that comes before that movie, and there never was."

"Oh, but there is much valor and many great deeds! How, indeed, will you come to understand the significance of Veidr and Lúkr--" 

Natasha was risen, her hand clasped over his mouth, quicker than Thor could follow. "Steve doesn't know the rest of the story yet, Thor. Let him come to it in its own time."

Thor nodded and she removed her restraint. "At any rate you would need my brother if you wish to hear the full tale, as it is meant to be told," he added sadly. "I have not yet drunk of the mead of poetry so deeply as you have, my friends."

"Don't worry, Thor," Clint said. "I like the prequel trilogy better too-" but before he could expand, Tony had hit him over the head with a cushion and spat, "Take that back!"

Thor leaned back into an over-soft chair of Midgard and watched the friendly battle that soon engulfed Bruce and Natasha as well. Yes, it was good to know that even here the arts of the storyteller and of the warrior were so deeply interwoven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES:  
> Warrior-poets: the warriors of the Old Norse sagas, like heroes of many cultures, were often also singers and poets, highly conversant with the myth-history and poetic canon of their culture. It is not unusual in the sagas for a warrior-hero to pause the action to proudly declaim a poem he has written himself.
> 
> Skalds are the Norse professional poets and performers, equivalent of Celtic bards and Germanic scops. Skalds were usually attached to large households, but it wasn't unusual for kings and lords to also consider themselves skalds.
> 
> Loki's battle technique here is borrowed from the old Irish satirists, whose insulting poetry could cause everything from disfigurement to sudden death, and was used offensively in battle (at least in the hero-stories.) Weaponized trolling, essentially. I don't have any citations of a direct equivalent in the Norse myths, but if anyone could it would be Loki.
> 
> Bragi: god of the arts of poetry.
> 
> Egill's Saga: one of the Icelandic sagas, probably among the crackiest of them. Werewolves! :D And the werewolves are just the beginning.
> 
> Hávamál: is a collection of wisdom sayings and myth, considered part of the Poetic Edda, and much adopted by modern Norse reconstructionists. It is mostly framed as being spoken by Odin, and includes a rather embarrassing incident in which he epically fails to seduce a young woman, so you can see why it wouldn't be as well known on Asgard. Widely quoted by characters in the Sagas (and in the first tale of Harold Shea, the Incompleat Enchanter.)
> 
> Flyting: the Norse high art of insult-competitions, conducted in verse, and also considered part of a warrior's art: think of something along the lines of a rap battle. The Lokasenna consists mostly of Loki pwning _everybody_ at this (and the Hárbarðsljóð consists of Thor being soundly defeated by someone who may be Loki.)
> 
> "adage about a plaintive longing for the waters of the North" - that is, pining for the fjords. :P This is of course Monty Python's dead parrot sketch (no comment on whether Bruce and Tony went back to someone's place afterward.)
> 
> "of a warrior-poet of Midgardian legend" - Steve read the Hobbit before the war, and is, in comics-canon, a Lord of the Rings fan, now that the rest of it is out. The poem he quotes appears in different forms in the two books, the first one being about setting eagerly off on a great adventure, and the LOTR version being the more equivocal one quoted here.
> 
> "You will find, Agent Barton, that criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot" - Batman, of course! I didn't write a section for Nick Fury, but I figure if Samuel L. Jackson can find time to be a comic book geek, so can Nick.
> 
> The Mead of Poetry: Odin seduced this out of a giantess. It was brewed by some dwarves out of the blood of a man who was made out of spit, and grants gifts of poetry and scholarship to those who drink it.
> 
> Tattúínárdǿlasaga - this is the original Old Norse saga on which the Star Wars movies were based; you can read an English translation online at the [Tattúínárdǿla saga site](http://tattuinardoelasaga.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/tattuinardoela-saga-if-star-wars-were-an-icelandic-saga/) (along with the country-western translation of the Hávamál). It is kind of a shame Lucas never made movies about the part that covers the youth of Anacen the sky-walker, though. Especially the part where he killed Jarjari in a berserker rage.


	2. Clint Barton And His Adventures In Adulthood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After he joined up, after his real training, on his first long leave with a broken ankle that kept him from doing anything useful, Clint realized that he had a television and a VCR and more money and time than he knew what to do with, and he could watch _anything he wanted_.

Clint never watched much TV or movies as a kid. He read books, some, although there weren't a lot of books around, and most of the time there were better things to do. TV was limited to whatever they could get on their little portable set in whatever small town they were stopped in, in the odd hours around set-up and practice and shows.

That was the main thing he missed - he wasn't jealous of having to go to school every day, or not being able to do real work, or staying in the same boring place all the time - but the few chances he got to play with 'normal' boys, somebody's nephew come for a visit, or a mark's kid who got himself lost well enough that they threw him in with Clint while they found his parents - they had their cartoons and their sitcoms that they watched every week, that they built their games and their stories around, and they always acted like Clint was a weirdo when he'd barely heard of them.

After he joined up, after his real training, on his first long leave with a broken ankle that kept him from doing anything useful, he realized that he had a television and a VCR and more money and time than he knew what to do with, and he could watch _anything he wanted_.

He took his crutches down to the video store on the corner and rented all of the original Star Trek, and watched it straight through. He was a little disappointed that the acting and special effects may in fact have been _better_ seen through static snow in three-in-the-morning syndicated reruns, but it was still damn fun to watch. Agent Coulson turned up, about day four, and casually mentioned that he'd been taping all the new ones, if Clint was interested, so they watched that. The next time Clint was laid up, Phil brought over a PlayStation and a stack of games. Video games at home was something else he'd never had.

After that he kind of went nuts with it. He'd grown up assuming that there were these whole worlds that would be closed off to him forever, and now suddenly he'd realized that there was nothing keeping him from watching and playing it all. He cut a swath through most of the classic pop culture of the previous decades over the next few years, and he was vaguely aware that at some point he crossed over the line between "normal child of the eighties" and "complete dork", but that's not why he did it. The dork thing was a lost cause even when he still had something that passed for a normal childhood, anyway. He did it because he'd always wanted to, and now he could. He might never get to bike down to the corner store or play Little League, but nobody could stop him from spending an entire weekend watching He-Man and eating cold cereal and refusing to deal with the real world.

Anyway, it was kind of useful when he was overseas, being the one all the guys knew they could come to if they wanted the latest season of something or the movie that premiered last weekend or a cracked copy of the new shoot-'em-up game.

He was kind of saving Star Wars for a special occasion, though, so yeah, The Phantom Menace was the first of those movies he ever saw, so what? It was a damn fun movie, Jar Jar was hilarious, the special effects and action scenes were amazing, and the people who hate it were just clinging to their nostalgic memories of their rosy childhoods, not judging it by its own merits.

That was elitist, was what it was.

Like a certain billionaire of his acquaintance who probably saw them in his own private theater or something.


	3. Revenge of the Nerds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark never saw _A New Hope_ in the theatrical release.

So Tony has strong opinions about the Star Wars movies, yeah, okay. He was at MIT in 1983, he would've been expelled if he didn't. And everything that man had done since Return of the Jedi was a travesty, honestly, they should take away his film-making license or whatever.

He never saw the first movie in the theater. His father told him that it was too dangerous to go without an entourage, and too much of a hassle for the theater to go with one. His mother wasn't paying attention. So he didn't get to see any of it until the AV club at school nagged the headmaster into buying the 400ft Super 8 digest. 

He's pretty sure he wasn't the only one in the club who hadn't seen it before, half of the other boys were in about the same situation he was, but they all played the "how many times have you seen it" game just as well as the others. Anyway, by that point Tony had the novelization practically memorized, so it wasn't hard to fake it. And once they had their sweaty little hands on the film reels, they made up for lost time.

By the time _Empire_ was released, Obie had realized that Star Wars was going to be a big thing, and got him and Tony tickets to the world premiere in DC, and Carrie Fisher shook his hand, which was basically the best thing that had happened to him up to that point in his life, and he spent a lot of time that summer trying to build his own R2 unit (having been assured by Obie that an X-wing was at least twenty-five years out.) Obie got them complete 35mm reels of both the films, too, and Tony knew better than to ask where or how.

Christmas 1982 his dad bought him pretty much everything in the Star Wars merchandise catalog, which was a nice thought, even if he was really too old by then to be playing with kid's toys. He managed to cannibalize parts from the remote-control sandcrawler and the battle computer to turn the AT-AT Imperial Walker into an operational autonomous robot, which was pretty cool even if his roommate at school thought the way it came up to him to ask for neck-scritches was creepy. That May, _Return of the Jedi_ came out, and Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini could make up for a _lot_ of flaws.

That June, Dad announced Stark Industries' billion-dollar contract for research and development on orbital X-ray laser platforms for the President's new Strategic Defense Initiative, and Tony decided he was totally more interested in the rumors about a new _Dune_ movie.

After MIT, he didn't have much time for watching dumb movies, until that really bad year when he spend most of his time working on JARVIS. JARVIS needed a lot of data on human behavior in order to process emotional and body-language cues correctly, and he wasn't going to expose him to the crap that was daytime television. Besides, he liked the ones with robots. So they spent a lot of time down in the basement with an old film, or a TV series Tony had pre-vetted, with Tony providing running commentary and answering JARVIS's questions. It helped JARVIS learn how to think, and it helped Tony remember not to.

These days, it was more likely to be JARVIS pre-vetting the shows. One of his jobs was to point out any premieres Tony might actually be willing to stay awake for, and _Phantom Menace_ was pretty much his first misstep. (He'd called it on the Special Editions being pieces of crap, which was when Tony knew his creation had finally surpassed him. Sometime he considers digitizing his old 35mm reels of the originals and releasing them onto the internet in HD, just to piss Lucas off. He'd have to figure out what Obie did with them first, though.)

Sometimes they still put on a show JARVIS is watching, while they're working (JARVIS really likes Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tony is pretty sure his computer had a crush on Giles. Probably the librarian thing.) And he follows a bunch of tech and sci-fi and maker blogs, partly to keep an eye on the competition, partly because he has to stay relevant and with-it for the cutting edge of geek culture, and also because these days, if you piss off Cory Doctorow, you're finished.

When he was a pimply-faced brat at MIT watching Blade Runner in the dorm basement, scaring all the girls away by idolizing _Weird Science_ , and arguing about which season of Battlestar Galactica sucked most, they swore that they'd use their powers of geekhood to take over the world.

Half of them are millionaires now. The President of the United States is a Batman collector. And he sits in the penthouse suite of his own Manhattan skyscraper, arguing with high-level government agents about which season of Battlestar Galactica sucked most (no matter what Natasha says, he still maintains it was Galactica 1980, although the finale of the new one was pretty damn awful too.) 

The geeks have taken over the world, and Tony Stark will always be their king.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony's exact age seems to be a matter of debate, but for purposes of this fic, I'm going with the MIT prop canon that has him graduating in '87 age approx. 19 and gives him a birthday in '68 or '69.
> 
> 400ft Super 8 digest: how you watched movies at home before there were commerical VHS releases. The Star Wars two-reel 8mm home release was about 19 minutes, mostly space battles; you can probably find it on YouTube. (There were home videocassette recorders in the '70s, the Starks probably had one in the '60s, but the studios were too busy panicking over how being able to watch movies at home would kill the film industry to take advantage, so the first Star Wars home video release wasn't until 1982.) The novel and comic book adaptations were very popular.
> 
> He got complete 35mm reels of both the films, too, and Tony knew better to ask where or how: How you watched *complete* movies at home before there were commercial VHS releases, if you were rich and unethical enough. There were no legal releases of these for most movies, so it was all black market, and collectors sometimes got raided. (LucasFilm still occasionally confiscates film from private collectors with 35 or 70 mm prints of the Star Wars movies, because it's still the only way to see the original trilogy in HD widescreen, and they hate their fans.)
> 
> remote-control sandcrawler, the battle computer, the AT-AT Imperial Walker: all real toys available in the early 80s. (I want that sandcrawler! It was $49.95 in 1980, which would be close to $150 in 2012 dollars.)
> 
> President's new Strategic Defense Initiative: Also known as _Star Wars_. (Yes the orbital x-ray lasers were a real-life plan of the real-life US government and almost caused a real-life nuclear crisis. And you thought '80s *comics* were silly.)
> 
> if you piss off Cory Doctorow, you're finished: e.g., http://xkcd.com/497/
> 
> Battlestar Galactica was winning fans' choice awards for worst SF TV show ever even *before* the 1980 series was out, believe it or not.


	4. Science fiction was invented in Russia, of course

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Natasha revealed an unexpected bit of Star Trek or comic-book trivia, people always assumed it was something she had to learn for a cover identity, to gain the trust of a powerful man.

When Natasha revealed an unexpected bit of Star Trek or comic-book trivia, people always assumed it was something she had to learn for a cover identity, to gain the trust of a powerful man.

She's never needed anything even vaguely science-fiction related for a mission. The sort of men she was best used against had a fairly monotonous taste in women, and one thing they all shared was no particular desire for a woman to reveal she had a life or interests beyond pleasing her man. Even the men she'd targeted who were known to have hobbies along those lines didn't want their _women_ to try to involve themselves in it.

Luckily, she had never been expected to _like_ her targets.

In a way it was mission prep that got her started, though. Natasha never had a childhood, but when she was shorter, she did often have to pass as a child in public, and so she was given a list of child-appropriate interests she might choose to familiarize herself with.

Later, she realized that the list had probably been developed by a middle-aged bureaucrat who hadn't met a real child since he was one, but by then the damage was done, and she didn't manage to lose the code-name Aelita until well after she had breasts. She never quite lost the interest in all things involving other worlds and strange futures or evil witches and noble princes, though. There was always down-time, waits between missions, especially when she was smaller and needed to grow, and good Soviet novels by good Soviet authors telling of star-spanning Communist utopias and cosmonauts coming home, children's books celebrating the traditions of the Motherland, were considered appropriate, if idiosyncratic, ways for her to exercise her mind. Stories like the Noon Universe gave her a wider world than the one she'd been living in, and taught her the possibility of a future, reminded her of what her work was _for_.

It wasn't until much, much later that she realized just how many of those books had been using the filter of fantasy to quietly and subtly critique the system their authors lived in, or how much of that hidden subversion had soaked in to her own thoughts, despite her and her keepers' best efforts.

When she started taking missions on her own, as an elite agent, crossing borders and changing identities with impunity, she was sometimes tempted by a colorful cover at an airport newsstand or a flashing rocket on a hotel television, but she never actually dared to read any Western SF, never admitted she wanted to, until After Clint.

She had of course been briefed on the basics of 20th century American culture, the things that no native would be ignorant of, but it was only the most superficial knowledge. At any rate, it was, until she stood in a SHIELD armory, being shown a top-rate amphibious rifle, and said, "That was invented in Russia, you know."

Clint cracked up, and refused to tell her why until she agreed to meet him in his rooms to watch a television show. She wasn't averse to the idea - if she was going to be American now, she was going to put in the effort.

It took them several evenings' worth of watching Clint's collection of videos, tired out from training and retraining, over vodka and bad pizza (or something with noodles that the SHIELD commissary called 'stroganoff'), before they got to the part where Ensign Chekov showed up, and she learned why Clint had laughed at her. Then she buried her head in her hands. " _This_ is what you Americans think of Russians?" she asked, with over-played despair. Actually, it could be a hell of a lot worse, and she knew it. And the kid who played Chekov was cute.

"Well, it was made in 1967, so maybe you could cut us some slack," Clint said, laughter dancing in his eyes. 1967. She tried to imagine what a Russian show would have done with an American character in 1967, but she barely knew her own nation's culture; nothing, once most of her missions had been out-of-country, but the pre-screened books and briefings her handlers had allowed her.

She swallowed that, anyway. She was long past believing any nation or government was about more than choosing the evils you could keep living with. Instead she asked, "Did you have many cute Russians on your American television?"

He grinned at her. "No, he was the first. Wait, no, I guess 'The Man From Uncle' was a little bit earlier. We can watch that next, if you want. You'll either love it or hate it. It's about a team of elite spies working for a secret organization with a very silly name, led by a Russian/American partnership." He paused. "Kuryakin's at least as cute as Chekov, though, I understand."

"You understand? Can't you judge for yourself?" she teased lightly.

He raised his hands in defense. "I haven't seen the show either!"

They finished Star Trek and moved on to the Man from Uncle, which was alternately hilarious, cringe-inducing, and cringingly hilarious. Kuryakin was indeed attractive, although perhaps more dashing than cute. Then Clint pulled out something called Babylon-5, which he said he'd seen part of and always meant to finish, and watch-American-TV-with-Clint somehow became a settled routine. When they went to see the new Star Wars prequel movie together, she paid.

She didn't have all that training for nothing, though, and it wasn't long before she realized that what she thought was an syllabus to get her more familiarized with American culture was actually Clint fitting her in to a pre-existing program of his own.

When she pointed this out, he shrugged. "Yeah, well, I didn't exactly have a normal American childhood either," he said. "I guess I'm making up for lost time."

There were many ways to be American, Natasha was learning. But what they all seemed to have in common was not feeling American _enough_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aelita, Queen of Mars: Aelita, or the Decline of Mars was a classic Russian science fiction novel by Alexei Tolstoy (no, not that Tolstoy), one of the first of the Soviet era, which was later adapted into several films. The Aelita is still the top science-fiction award in Russia.
> 
> Noon Universe: a series of novels by the Strugatsky brothers, set in a space-faring future, incorporating both hard SF and a lot of social/political commentary. Still considered the greatest Soviet science fiction. 
> 
> "That was invented in Russia": Lieutenant Chekov's catchphrase on the original Star Trek
> 
> "No, he was the first. Wait, no, I guess 'The Man From Uncle' was a little bit earlier.: both Chekov from Star Trek and Illya Kuryakin from Man from Uncle, as good-guy Russian characters, were considered progressive gestures of peace and global unity. At least, they were in the US in the 1960s.


	5. Steve Rogers in the World of Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 1940, Bucky took Steve and a couple of girls to the closing weeks of the New York World's Fair, and Steve sneaked off to go to the U. S. Army recruiting station instead.
> 
> In 1939, Bucky took Steve and a couple of girls to the New York World's Fair when it was still new and exciting. Steve sneaked off to go to the First World Science Fiction Convention instead.

In 1940, Bucky took Steve and a couple of girls to the closing weeks of the New York World's Fair, and Steve sneaked off to go to the U. S. Army recruiting station instead.

In 1939, Bucky took Steve and a couple of girls to the New York World's Fair when it was still new and exciting. Steve sneaked off to go to the First World Science Fiction Convention instead.

He'd gone with the excuse that he was still dreaming of turning his art into a career, of selling some of his sketches of robots and spaceships to the magazines, and he needed to meet people and get his name out. But he soon got distracted by the real business of the affair - good clean fun, with folks who understood you when you said what you wanted to say. He got to see a lot of fans he'd only known till then as names and letters in Astounding and FAPA and the SFFan. He got into an argument, with someone he only later realized he'd known for years, about Michelism and whether it was fitting for SF fans to embrace anti-Fascism and Communism, which was something fandom as a whole had got rather tired of by then, but Steve still hadn't learned to keep his mouth shut.

The argument turned into a minor fist-fight, but since nearly everybody else at the con was just as much of a 97-pound-weakling as he was, he actually won for once. He made it back to his and Bucky's place on Sunday evening with nothing worse than a black eye and a pile of art prints he bought at auction that he couldn't really afford, and cultivated an air of mystery rather than telling Bucky where he'd been.

He always meant to go to another World Science Fiction Convention, but the War got in the way, and he figured he'd missed his chance. Turned out the was wrong.

In 2012 he made it to the 70th World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, Illinois, and discovered that not a lot had changed.

Oh, it was different; there were a lot more than 200 people there, for one, and a lot of magazines and novels (and comics, and movies, and television shows) had been made since his last time, and there was an award named after Hugo Gernsback - and Forry, even! As if he were a responsible adult! Steve was a couple of years older than Forry, had been among the oldest at that first Worldcon, and sometimes he still had trouble believing _he_ was a grownup.

He wasn't even the only charter member there; he spoke at least two other people he'd known before, and he couldn't decide if that made him feel very old or very young - although the fact that neither of them remembered his name, not out of costume, definitely put a vote in for "young". Hardly anybody had recognized him last time, either; he wasn't really that kind of fan.

But there had just been a movie made of John Carter of Mars, so everybody was still talking about ERB; there was a new Batman movie still in theaters, and fans still discussed him in the sheepish tones of people who weren't quite sure Batman counted as SF. He dressed up as Buck Rogers in the 51st Century the night of the masquerade - Forry's idea had finally caught on, apparently - and nearly everybody recognized the character and thought it was very clever, the way he let himself wonder at all the marvels of the future (although he did get a lot of people guessing 'Steampunk?') APAs were still going strong; they were just called "blogrolls" these days, and took a lot less effort - JARVIS had shown him how to start reading them, so he even got to see some people he'd only known as blog handles. He soon got down to the real business of the affair - good fun, with folks who understood you when you said what you wanted to say. 

People still got into overwrought arguments about things that had been silly in the first place that they were all tired of discussing. At least this time he was breaking up the fight, not starting it, so maybe he _had_ grown up a little in the intervening seventy years. He certainly wasn't a 97-pound-weakling now, anyway, and if it wasn't for one wild punch by a combatant he'd have gotten out unscathed.

He flew back to the Tower on Sunday evening with nothing worse than a black eye and a stack of art prints he'd bought at auction that he couldn't quite believe he could afford, and cultivated an air of mystery rather than telling Tony where he'd been.

Especially since he'd taken the chance to finally watch the prequel trilogy up in somebody's room party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve sneaked off to go to the First World Science Fiction Convention instead: The first Worldcon was held in NYC in 1939, timed to correspond to the opening of the World's Fair. (There had been US and East Coast cons before, but this was the first Worldcon, and much, much bigger than anything that had come before.) The wank about its organizers was *epic*.
> 
> names and letters in Astounding and FAPA and the SFFan: _Astounding Stories_ was one of the most popular science fiction/fantasy magazines of the late '30s, and its lettercolumn acted like a message board for the fandom. FAPA was the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, perhaps best explained as a private mailing list for fans who were really into heavy meta and had access to hektograph or mimeograph machines; the best wank of '38 and '39 was about FAPA's officer elections (fake deaths! flouncing!). The Science Fiction Fan was one of the more stable (and least wanky) of the fanzines in 1939.
> 
> Michelism: a doctrine promoted by a cabal of BNFs that it was the responsibility of science fiction fandom (as being more intelligent and better-educated that the populace as a whole) to endorse far-left political causes (particularly communism and socialism) and actively fight fascism in all its forms. Basically the SJW of its day and the root cause of all the wank mentioned above. By Worldcon it had mostly died down; the expulsion of [the Futurians](http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1087998.html#cutid1) from Worldcon was pretty much its last hurrah.
> 
> 97-pound-weakling: The famous sand-kicked-in-face ad didn't appear until after the war, but Charles Atlas was already using the phrase in advertising by the mid '30s.
> 
> a pile of art prints he'd bought at auction: The first Worldcon was free, due to most of fandom being broke, and funded entirely by the art auction.
> 
> the 70th World Science Fiction Convention: minus a break for WWII, Worldcon has been held every year since (I'm even going to probably be in chicago at the right time this year and won't get to go. because it is no longer designed for broke people. *sigh*)
> 
> an award named after Hugo Gernsback - and Forry: The Hugo Awards and Forrest J Ackerman Big Heart Award for services to fandom are named after BNFs from Steve's day who went on to have long and illustrious careers in fandom, and are awarded at Worldcon every year.
> 
> among the oldest at that first Worldcon: The median age appears to have been about 18. People were busy being boggled at the idea that fans could be married and have careers and kids.
> 
> Forry's idea had finally caught on: Forrest J Ackerman wore the [first recorded cosplay outfit](http://fanlore.org/wiki/File:Forrestcostuming.jpg) to the 1939 Worldcon
> 
> if you want to know more about fandom in Steve's day, I recommend [Fancyclopedia I](http://fanac.org/Fannish_Reference_Works/Fancyclopedia/Fancyclopedia_I/), [Up To Now: A History of Fandom As Jack Speer Sees It](http://www.efanzines.com/UpToNow/UpToNow.pdf), and [The Way The Future Blogs](http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/) by Fred Pohl. Mostly what you will learn is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.


	6. What do you get a Hulk for Christmas (when he already has some stretchy pants)?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce was never all that interested in escapist fiction. He was generally more interested in actually escaping.

Bruce was never all that interested in escapist fiction. He was generally more interested in actually escaping. He didn't see much point in reading about a libertarian rebellion on the Moon when he could be working his way through the recipes in the Anarchist Cookbook instead (and then figuring out how to make the damn recipes actually _work_.)

It's not that he disliked sci-fi and fantasy - they'd probably take his geek membership card away if he did, and some days that was the only thing he'd got going for him. He watched all of the required canon (most of it in college), and liked it, and memorized the parts he had to in order to communicate with his peers, and he could still enjoy a good evening with friends spent watching special effects on the tube or shooting zombies on the computer screen. He even went to see the original Star Wars movies in the theater, because Dad somehow got the idea that's what all the boys were doing and it would be a good father-son outing.

Left to himself, though, he was a lot more likely to keep his feet on the ground and his nose in a scientific journal. When he was too fried for a science, he took a guilty pleasure in those braincandy thriller novels about white men who had to go on the run, save the world, uncover all the secrets, and get the girl. Leave your irony at the door.

It turned out, though, that somewhere deep inside, he'd always had an inner fanboy boiling to get out.

That was why, the morning after the First Annual Avengers New Year's Party, where he possibly let things get a little bit out of control, he banged his head gently against the pillow and shouted, "STARK!"

The house routed him directly to wherever Tony was, so he got to hear, "I had nothing to do with it, I swear!" over the sound of something metal being severely mistreated.

Bruce put on his most dangerous voice. "Why did I wake up with the entirety of the Star Wars Christmas Album stuck in my head?"

He could maybe believe it wasn't Tony's fault. "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" _had_ been Tony's fault, but Gummi Bears was Clint's and the old Batman was Steve's, the traitor. (He actually kind of liked Cheburashka though, so Natasha got a pass.)

"Uh, it turns out we were wrong all along and your alter-ego has no taste? Natasha and Thor had never heard it so Clint insisted on putting it on and then the other guy wouldn't let us take it off repeat."

Bruce groaned and flung an arm over his eyes. "But whose fault is it that a copy of that album even _exists_ on your _servers_ , Tony?"

"JARVIS's." Tony paused, and JARVIS cut in. "Sheer sentiment, sir. He used to sing me the R2-D2 song at holidays, when I was little."

And dammit, how could he even complain about that? But it made him remember the R2-D2 song again.

Bruce's life was already a nightmare, and now, for a private soundtrack, he had "R2D2, we wish you, a merry Christmas, R2-D2, we love you, it's true! R2D2, we wish you, a merry Christmas, we hope our, little message, gets to you," running through his head.

Forever.

Like a boot stomping on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Anarchist Cookbook: Written by an angry teenager and originally small-press published in 1971, this contained instructions for everything from bomb-making to cooking drugs to phone phreaking (the precursor to internet hacking), and in the days before anybody could find that stuff on the internet, became legendary in a bunch of subcultures. Famous for being owned by many terrorists and being full of dangerously inaccurate recipes.
> 
> Star Wars Christmas Album: [A thing that exists](http://star-wars.suvudu.com/2011/12/selections-from-christmas-in-the-stars-the-star-wars-christmas-album.html). Widely held to be better than the Star Wars Christmas TV Special, but only just.
> 
> My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: [My Little Pony, My Little Pony , I used to wonder what friendship could be, Until you all shared its magic with me.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9OvmpYw_8)
> 
> Gummi Bears: [Gummi Bears! Bouncing here and there and everywhere, High adventure that's beyond compare, They are the Gummi Bears.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRTSZZgCUik)
> 
> Batman: [Nananananana nananananana nanananana Batman!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qP-NglUeZU)
> 
> Cheburashka: [But now I'm Cheburashka, and every dog that passes, offers me, so gladly, his tiny little paw.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ZRcgRm4ds)
> 
> [R2-D2, we wish you a Merry Christmas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUFZklIOFvg)
> 
> ....you're welcome for all that.
> 
> a boot stamping on a human face, forever: a description of the future in George Orwell's 1984 (the Star Wars Christmas Album stuck in your head is _somewhat_ better than that, Bruce is being overdramatic. Slightly.)


End file.
